Well, I've never bought a desktop. I've always built my own. I'll have a hard time feeling sorry for Dell or HP if they sell more laptops than desktops, because frankly aside from some OEMs having some fairly slick cases, the specs are crap for the prices they charge.

For me, my desktop is my game console, my media server, my media player, my word processor, my web browser, my book/comic book reader and library, my chat platform and probably a lot more that I'm not even thinking of off the top of my head. I want it in a central location (my living room) on a big screen. The majority of people probably use computers mostly to check Facebook, and for them a laptop or tablet is probably all they're going to need. There's no shock really where the trend is going. That doesn't mean Microsoft made a wise decision in axing the start menu (I like the new Start Screen, too, by the way; I use both. And thank you, Stardock, for Start8, Decor8 and ModernMix).

Leave Gates alone! He isn't the head of Microsoft for at worst five years now. First Arseperger's, now this. I'm starting to suspect that you have quite unhealthy level of interest in the man, an obsession even.